Quality Assurance

"Sandy!" Ron was stood in the door of Sandy's office, shouting cheerfully. His face was red, and he was sweating even in the cool of the office's air-conditioning. "Good news, my boy. The review board have been very pleased with your work in the last three months, you're showing real signs of dedication to our cause. They've recommended that we turn the water and heating on in your little flat."

Sandy tried to smile, but his face seemed to just crease like an aborted piece of origami. He looked tired and dishevelled, and had been sitting behind his desk for the last 35 hours, working on a brief that argued that Oxfam's presence in third-world countries was on a par with that of Nestle. The abacus, with its beads made from tiny human skulls, rattled gently in front of him where he'd been using it just before Ron had turned up.

"Hot water?" he said slowly. "Strong!"

Ron's eyes glazed over slightly as he thought about what else he had to say. "There was something else..." he muttered, half to himself. "Something you could help out with. Oh, that's it! We're employing your mother, so we thought you'd be the ideal person to show her round the company and get her acquainted with the way we work."

"My mother's dead," said Sandy coldly. He found that he could only deal with this by suppressing all emotion when he had to talk about her. "You had her killed to incentivise me. I didn't dare go to her funeral for fear of what else you'd do."

"Well that's the thing," said Ron, looking embarrassed. "Our HR department was looking at their five-year plan of people they'll be surplussing, and the Director pointed out that whenever you see psychics on television, the dead always seem to know a lot more than the living. Being on the other side gives you a far better view of the world. So they've surplussed the entire QA team, and replaced them with a semi-famous psychic, and he's channelling your mother to do the QA job. It's a far more efficient use of resources."

"But what if the psychic channels the wrong person? Or what if my mother doesn't spot a QA issue?" said Sandy. He massaged his temples, feeling a pressure headache starting to build. His eyeballs felt hot and seemed to be popping out of his face.

"Well, that's why we picked your mother," said Ron, shifting his bulk awkwardly. His thighs rubbed together, and little sparks of static electricity crackled in the air. "If there's a problem with her work, we can punish you. You were the person she was begging to be allowed to see before she died, you see, so we're pretty certain she wouldn't want to see you taking the fall for her mistakes..."

Sandy picked the abacus up silently, and started rattling the skulls on their wires from one side to another, apparently calculating. Ron watched him for a few moments, apprehension written clearly across his face, and when nothing else seemed to be happening, relaxed slightly.
"I'll fetch the psychic then," he said. "I think you'll like him, his name's Moloch and he's got a real way with people. Only this morning he was telling me that there's a great shock in store for me in the near future, and that that will take me somewhere that very few people get to go." He shuffled out of Sandy's office, his shoes rubbing on the nylon carpetting.

"Idiot," said Sandy softly, almost under his breath. "We can all see that coming." There was a loud bang and a sudden, high-pitched cry from half-way along the corridor. "The build-up of static was going to get you sooner or later, Ron, all it needed was someone to leave something that could earth it for you lying around where you wouldn't see it until too late." The abacus clicked and rattled ominously. "And very few people get to go to the intensive care burns ward." Finally the rattle of the abacus died away, and Sandy put it back down on the desk.

"Now let's bring on this psychic and see if he's really met my mother."

Abacus

"Welcome back, Sandy!" said Ron, his voice full of what he thought was cheerful bonhomie. Sandy, who looked as cheerful as a hen caught in the rain, thought it sounded like Ron was eating a mouthful of cake. "The reports from the motivational program are extremely encouraging. We're sure that you're going to be a dedicated and committed employee again!"

Sandy nodded carefully. His mother's funeral had been held during the motivational program and he hadn't dared attend for fear of being considered insufficiently committed to the company. He smiled insincerely, sure that Ron wouldn't spot a nuance like that, and turned toward the cubicle farm where he worked.

"Ah no," said Ron cheerfully, waddling towards him. His thighs rubbed together as he walked, and the shiny polyester suit trousers that he wore crackled with built-up static. "You've been promoted as a result of the two final psychological tests. You have an office now! This way."

Sandy had flinched at the mention of the tests, and rubbed unconsciously at the burns on his arm, but he followed Ron's pointing finger along a nylon-carpetted corridor towards the junior executives offices. Ron waddled along behind him, in a kind of pimp-roll made necessary by his bulk.
"Just in here," said Ron, and Sandy pushed open a melanine-veneer door into a small office with an outside window. There was a flat-pack desk already assembled, an anti-ergonomic chair, a filing cabinet with a couple of long scratches down one side, and a swiss-cheese plant. On the window-sill was an abacus. Sandy glanced at it twice, wondering why it looked odd, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Now," said Ron, pulling up a chair from behind the swiss-cheese plant, "these offices are for people who are showing potential. You're going to be watched, young Sandy, and closely for a while too. You've done very well on that course, but we need to be sure that it's not just because of the course. We don't want to see any signs of you slacking off now. But if you push on, if you give 235.82% or better to the company, then I can guarantee you sight of the fast-track scheme within a year. And that's not small eggs."

Sandy walked around the desk, and sat down on the anti-ergonomic chair, wondering where the precise-sounding figure of 235.82% came from. "That's about a 19-hour day, isn't it?" he said. His voice trembled slightly. "With a little less than half an hour for lunch?"

"Good man, Sandy, I knew you'd show immediately enthusiasm!" said Ron, slapping his thighs with a hand that looked as though it were made from plasticine. "And the better news is that because we anticipated this from you, we've arranged for you to live a little closer to the office."

"But I live with my girl--" started Sandy, but Ron cut him off, holding his hand in the air.

"No girlfriend, Sandy. I'm sorry, but although she ignored the cease-and-desist letters from the lawyers, she changed her mind after she received the child-pornography pictures with you in."

Sandy's face dropped, and his skin went ghostly pale and clammy.

"She's not going to the police, as we persuaded her that we could rehabilitate you," said Ron, still sounding eerily cheerful, "but she did burn most of your stuff. And the flat down. So we've found you a little place just over the road, you can see it from it your window. And we've got you an all-hours security pass too, so you can be in the office whenever you feel you need to be."

"What can I say?" said Sandy, his voice trembling a little more.

"There's nothing for you to say," said Ron. "Nothing at all. Now you get on, there's a good company-man."

Ron stood up and left, and the chair he'd been sat on slowly uncompressed, the metal making pinking noises as it tried to straighten. Sandy picked the abacus up from the window-sill, and looked at it, while he tried to sort out what the company had done to his life now.

Finally he focused on what was odd about the abacus. Instead of beads it had tiny human skulls.

A company man

"Right Sandy," said Ron, "I've called you in for this review because there's been some doubt expressed at higher levels that you're not really pulling your weight."

I gaped at him, clueless as to what he might mean.

"You see, it's been noted that you went home every night last week at 7:30," continued Ron, who was busy not looking at me. He was corpulent, florid and bald, sat behind a flatpack desk on a chair a little too small for his bulk. His pin-striped suit, stretched across his gut, made him look like an executive beach-ball. "There's concern expressed that you're not committed enough."

"Er, but our working day is 9 till 5:30," I said. "I haven't exactly been leaving early."

"But you're not staying all that late either, are you?" said Ron, wheezing slightly. "You should take a leaf out of Alex's book, he's got real commitment to the company."

"He's dead!" I said. "We found him dead at his desk in his cubicle, and only because the cleaners complained that he was starting to smell."

"For which we're all deeply grateful," said Ron, then paused, looking puzzled. "Deeply regretful," he corrected himself. "But he showed commitment, Sandy, even in death. It turns out that his life insurance policy named the company as his benefactor. Thanks to his death we have a once-off profit to add to the balance sheet this year; we're thinking that the return to the shareholders will be up a whole half-percent on last year. He had no dependents, so there's no-one to contest it.

"Is that the problem, Sandy? Is family getting in the way? At the last board meeting the directors approved us hiring a divorce lawyer full-time so as to be able to provide staff with the most competitive prices. We can get you out of any awkward marriage commitments."

"Well, I have a girlfriend--" I started, but Ron cut me off.

"That's fine Sandy, we'll have the corporate lawyers send her a cease-and-desist letter. We'll have you footloose and fancy-free in no time! A young buck like you should be proving your commitment to the company now, and earning the salary that'll allow you to buy the woman of your dreams when you retire!"

"Umm, I think I'd quite like--"

"We all would, Sandy, but we have to think about what's best for the company here. Look at the CEO for example. His racing yacht was written off last month when it ran over that sunken coral reef off the coast of Australia, and because it was secured against his wife and children he's all on his own until the insurance comes through and frees them up."

"What?" I said, feeling that I'd missed something Ron had said.

"They're collateral," said Ron patiently, shifting in his seat and making the chair groan. "They've been indentured so that if the insurance doesn't come through the bank gets its money back anyway. His wife is working as an exotic hostess in Swindon, and his children are being used for testing genetically modified crops by one of the big agrifirms."

"That's inhuman!" I said.

"Not at all," said Ron happily, grinning from ear to ear. "He spoke to them only last week, and said that they're as happy as pigs in genetically engineered mud up there."

"Mud doesn't have genes," I said.

"Their's does!" said Ron, and again he looked slightly puzzled for a moment, then his face brightened again. "But the point is, Sandy, that you need to show a little more commitment. The firm wants to get more from you in return for what we're giving you. We're going to put you on the incentive program."

"I've not heard of that," I said, wondering what they could offer me that they thought would encourage me to work myself to death.

"It's not something we talk about a lot," said Ron, "and only selected employees are eligible for it. Fortunately both of your parents were still alive, so you are."

"Were?" I said. My blood was suddenly roaring in my ears, my heart was pounding in my chest, and little black dots were eating away at my vision.

"Well," said Ron, sounding embarrassed for the first time, "like I said, it's an incentive program, so you have to know what the consequences of failing to take the incentive are..."